564 Cook : A Synopsis of the 



aculeata, a spiny palm from the mountains about Caracas. The 

 trunk is said to be erect, ten meters high, subcylindrical and very 

 spiny. The leaves are about 1.6 m. long, with four pairs of re- 

 mote, broad, cuneate, praemorse pinnae, strongly whitish pubescent 

 on the under side ; the petiole is also beset with spines. Spathe 

 acuminate at both ends, aculeate on the outside, smooth 

 within, opening longitudinally; spadix 4.5 dm. long, composed 

 of cylindrical spikes placed opposite. Flowers hermaphrodite ; 

 calyx trifid, the divisions acute ; petals acuminate ; filaments 6, 

 subulate, anthers rounded, style as long as the stamens, stigma 

 trifid ; drupe globose, the fleshy farinaceous pulp rather taste- 

 less, though edible ; nut hard, of the size of a musket ball, uni- 

 locular, black, furrowed with a large number of grayish grooves, 

 of which three are always much larger than the others. The ker- 

 nel is white, very sweet, and very good to eat. Aiphanes grows 

 in the ravines and forests of the high mountains of the district of 

 Caucagua, province of Caracas, Venezuela and requires a fertile, 

 somewhat moist soil. It flowers and fruits in July. 



From the above it appears that Aiphanes is a genus quite dif- 

 ferent from Curima, approaching some of the South American 

 species of Bactris much more closely than it resembles the Puerto 

 Rico tree. 



The genus Marara was based by Karsten (Linnaea, 28 : 389) 

 on M. bicaspidata from Colombia, a cespitose palm having a trunk 

 7 meters high and 10 cm. in diameter, clothed with black spines 6 

 to 8 mm. long. The leaves are 125 cm. long with from 60 to 80 

 pairs of cuneate pinnules which measure 3 dm. in length and 1 5 

 cm. in width, and are clustered in sixes or eights. This ap- 

 pears to be a very extreme development of the leaf-arrangement 

 seen in the cultivated palm commonly called Martinezia caryo- 

 taefolia where the leaflets are distinctly clustered, but by no means 

 so crowded as must be the case when on the side of a leaf 125 

 cm. long are leaflets with an aggregate width of 10-13 m. 



The palm commonly cultivated in conservatories as Martinezia 

 caryotaefolia is obviously allied to Curima, perhaps more closely 

 than to either Aipliancs or Marara, but in addition to the clustered 

 pinnules it has a more slender habit, especially apparent in the 

 long internodes and the more lax inflorescence. This difference 



